Chief Executive's Foreword

With so much change in society, in government and in the world of communications, COI has to be in a state of permanent review.

Although society, government and the media are constantly changing, COI always has the same two balancing acts to pull off:

* How can we nurture the professional esprit of each of our many specialist communications disciplines, while at the same time joining them up and integrating our service more effectively?
* How can we provide an efficient centre for government communications, while at the same time supporting our diverse clients across government and the public sector?

The reorganisation of COI described in this report was our latest response to the first question, while the introduction of new governance helps to answer the second.

The reorganisation maintains the integrity of the specialist teams but redeploys them, in order to support the new way we want to plan our work - from insight, through execution, to evaluation.

The new governance - the Government Strategic Marketing Advisory Board - brings together key government stakeholders with some of the most respected marketers from the private sector, to ensure that COI delivers against mutually agreed marketing priorities.

Although the way we work is changing all the time, our purpose stays the same. We need to make the very best use of our unique cross-government insight into a wide range of audiences to create, or help to create, the most engaging, motivating and efficient communication - and then to make it as easy as possible for everyone to use our services.